Real MMO Item Profits From 'Play Money'

V_M_Smith writes "Showing it's possible to make real profits from 'play money' - Julian Dibbell set out to make a mint selling virtual goods on Ebay and elsewhere - and (at least for the last month) he succeeded. There's a story about the feat over at The UK Guardian and another over at Terra Nova, which explains Dibbell's 'year-long experiment in virtual item trading from the fantasy world of Ultima Online netted him, in its final month, a tidy profit of $3,917. Over the course of a year, that would be $47,000'."

Comments

Play money?

[obeythefist]

The question is, once you're trading instead of playing the game for fun, isn't it just like having a job anyway?

And for the people buying the virtual goods, isn't that like paying to "cheat" in the game?

Or is the game written in such a way that this is taken into account, and hence the whole point of playing the game is purely concerned with how much real world money you can spend on improving your character?

Perception of Value, Duh

[limekiller4]

From the article:
"The phenomenon of the online economies is symptomatic of the increasing age and maturity of players of interactive entertainment. According to calculations reported by Edward Castronova, an economics professor at California State University, people are taking internet games so seriously that since the beginning of the year, Category 1654 has racked up $6,404,668 in sales - real money spent on things that do not exist."

I kind of take umbrage at the notion that buying something intangible is a concept new to the advent of MMOs or even somehow novel.

What is art? It's about $20 worth of paint, canvas and wood, isn't it? Oh, it's arranged in a way that makes it worth $4.6mil? I see, so it's not the worth of a thing but the perception of worth, the interpolation of physical value with non-physical value?

So why is the selling of items that carry very real value to people surprising? Here is a simple rule! If more than one person values something, you have a market.

Re:Perception of Value, Duh

[limekiller4]

anthony_philipp writes:
"why does it have to be more than one person?"

Because markets are created by a disparity between perceptions of worth. When a person sells a stock, for example, that person thinks it is in their best interest to sell it while another person feels that it's a bad idea to sell it and it's a good idea to buy it.

If you have only one person, you have no span. If you have no span you have no market because one person must have only one perceived value.

I did not take into account the possibility of that one person being a schizophreniac, however...

Re:Perception of Value, Duh

[limekiller4]

BenjyD writes:
"Except that a piece of art is not entirely arbitrary - it requires time and effort to make. If they wanted to, the developers could produce any number of these items in effectively zero time and effort."

I'll approach this on three fronts.

First, I'm going to guess you're young since your reply indicates you're probably not familiar with Warhol and his Studio 54. The point of Studio 54 was to mass market art. To, in effect, assembly line it and essentially make fun of the 80's art craze. On a side note, go see Basquiat . It's the most star-filled, incredible movie you've never even heard of.

Second, clearly the effort of art production is not commensurate with the price.

effort + raw materials != cost

Third, the central issue here is that the idea that an intangible item has hard currency value is novel. It isn't. Whether or not the people that maintain the software could effectively glut the market instantly only proves that the market is manipulatable. It does not speak to the "why" of the fact that the market exists in the first place.

Re:3K? Pshaw.

[Tofino]

I wouldn't call the virtual item buyers "sad". I picture these folks as having more money than time, and wanting to experience, say, the high level game in Everquest without having to go through the tedium of levelling their character to 60, plus AA, plus gear, etc. By spending a whack of cash, they can then get in game for a while to figure out how to actually play (you can spot these people a MILE away, level 60s who don't understand the concept of "proc"), and finally experience the end game.

No more sad than playing the game for hours a day in the first place in some people's eyes.

Re:3K? Pshaw.

[Anonymous Coward]

bingo. Against a EULA != against the law. At worst it's a breach of contract.